RE: Time and downfits

["Michael Gutzwiller" <deepsky@fuse.net>]

Both Michael and I are working on reatime control programs. Michael's will
run under Linux, mine will run under Windows.  Just as a check, my program
says the Julian date right now (December 16, 2001, 23:11 EST) is 2452260.
How does that compare with other programs?

On another note.  Our new file format is supposed to be jjjjxxxc.fit where
jjjj is julian date-2450000, xxx is a sequence number (000 - 999) and c is
the site character.  Unfortunately downfits is looking for a filename of the
old type where the second character is the filter.  I was testing my program
tonight to try to create a dark file when I discovered this.  (It kept
looking, and not finding, the plate_2 file.)  Is the source code available
for downfits or can it be modified to use the new format?

Thanks,

Mike G.

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-tass@listserv.wwa.com [mailto:owner-tass@listserv.wwa.com]On
Behalf Of Tom Droege
Sent: Sunday, December 16, 2001 10:52 PM
To: Andrew Bennett; tass@listserv.wwa.com
Subject: Re: Time


OK, I am patiently waiting for someone else to write the real time control
program.  I write the date of the evening I start observing in the log book
and on the data disk.  So anyone who knows what they are doing should be
able to straighten it out.  I have been setting the time to within a second.

Other than that, I have decided not to solve this problem.  I have absolute
confidence that I will never get this right.  Well, never say never, by
extreme luck I might get it right on occasion.

Tom Droege


At 12:49 AM 12/17/01 +0000, you wrote:
>Back in the mists of time you wrote
> >2000-01-01 at 12:00 should be 2451545
>I've been fighting my way through WCSSub28
>dateutil.c and I find
>
>Modified Julian Date = Julian Date - 2400000.5
>
>Taking Julian Epoch 2000.0 to mean 2000Jan1 at
>00:00UT (not sure if this is true!) I then get
>2001-01-01 at 12:00UT = JD 2451545.5 = MJD 51545.0